Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation has become a preferred form of inducing one whose air passages to the lungs have become fully or partially obstructed, being deemed more efficacious than other forms of artificial respiration. When one's breathing has stopped or is no longer apparent, regardless of other injuries that may have been suffered it is necessary that breathing be restored at once. If cessation of breathing lasts longer than several minutes, irreversible brain damage will be the result. Thus resuscitation in the form of mouth-to-mouth breathing assistance will often save the life of a victim of an accident or other trauma and, minimally, will prevent the victim from suffering brain damage.
Particularly with the advent of the AIDS disease, one administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a stranger will have a well-justified apprehension that, by bringing his mouth into direct contact with that of the victim, he will be incurring the possibility of acquiring the HIV virus from the victim to himself by transfer of saliva and other mouth fluids. Moreover, when one is the victim, there is always the chance that, when unconscious, a well-meaning stranger who applies mouth-to-mouth resuscitation will unwittingly transfer the HIV virus from that resuscitator to the victim. It is, therefore, highly advisable that there be some means for preventing the transfer of communicable diseases between resuscitator and victim when mouth-to-mouth breathing restoration is supplied.
In one disclosure that has attempted to meet this problem, U.S. Pat. No. 4,510,931, a sanitary barrier is disclosed in a form of a sheet of expanded, porous polytetraflouroethylene bonded to a substrate. The opaque sheet of plastic is placed over the mouth of the victim and, according to the patentee, substantially prevents the transfer of aerosols, bacteria, particles and viruses between the practitioner and the patient.
However, it will be apparent that when placing any opaque sheet of material over the mouth of a victim, the mouth and the lower portion of the victim's face will be covered by the sheet, making it difficult to locate the mouth of the victim. In addition, since the mouth of the victim must be open in order to permit the passage of air into and from the victim's mouth, the use of an opaque sheet between the mouth of the victim and that of the resuscitator will prevent the resuscitator from observing whether the mouth of the victim has remained open and whether, in applying his own mouth to that of the victim, contact has been made in such a manner that air from the lungs of the resuscitator may be supplied fully and accurately through the open mouth of the victim. Even if resuscitation has commenced with the proper placement of the mouth of the resuscitator over that of the victim, a shifting of the position of the victim may result in the victim's mouth being displaced or closed. The resuscitator may then be unaware that while he is supplying air to the victim with a velocity that he deems appropriate given the body weight of the victim, that supply of air is inappropriate because some of the air passes out of the victim's mouth through a side thereof rather than being forced into his lungs.
As a consequence, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide an article of manufacture which will effectively separate the mouths of the victim and resuscitator during artificial respiration, but which will permit the resuscitator to view the mouth of the victim during that procedure. In this manner, the resuscitator will be able initially to position his mouth properly over the mouth of the victim so that air from the resuscitator will be supplied directly to the victim's air passageways, and such position may be maintained so that despite a shifting of the position of the mouth of the victim, the resuscitator can likewise shift the mask and/or his oral position and thereby continue effectively to revive the victim.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a mask that will have substance, i.e., a degree of stiffness and firmness so that it will tend to maintain the position in which it is placed. Also, it may be grasped by one hand of the resuscitator and maintained in operable position by virtue of its stiffness although grasped only at one end thereof. This is important because in modern resuscitation techniques one hand of the resuscitator is applied over the nose of the victim to close off the nasal passageway and prevent the escape therethrough of breath supplied during the procedure. Where a relatively soft, flexible sheet of material that does not have the requisite firmness is positioned over the mouth of the victim, such position will be difficult to maintain because a limp sheet of plastic will tend to shift position with repositioning of the victim's head unless constantly held at two locations. On the other hand, a firm mask can be grasped at one end and the entirety of the mask properly located over the victim's mouth by manipulating from that location, or it may retain its position without the need for any manual control whatsoever.